Buckaroo

Rainier in winter is serious. Can you live in a snow cave for days? Can you wake up every hour during the night to clear the air hole while the storm is trying to cover it up? If and when you run out of food/fuel can you descend with 30' visibility in a storm? Climb it in summer first, it's still serious even then. I've never got lucky in winter. Got to 12,000' once and there was a steady 60mph wind, higher at the summit. And that was good conditions. Usually it's just snowing. Even the highly experienced are rolling the dice in winter.

It's not granite there are a couple of other routes there you can TR there's also a nice ground level traverse off to the left if you're solo

This would be about the hardest time to do the traverse. The NF bowl is an exposed rock face made up of small steps, ranging in size from 1" to 4 ". The edges are all very rounded and the rock is really smooth. The best way to climb it is free solo, because for about 2 pitches there is almost zero pro. It's only 5.6 but it hardly ever dries out this time of year. I soloed the NF in June one time, completely dry, can't imagine doing it wet. Could be done, but not by me. And like Becky says, the wetness increases rockfall. Even if it's not raining you get soaked because the brush doesn't dry out this time of year. If you don't know the descent then it's going to take you 2 days, because you're going to be in the dark by then with the short days. Now your carrying more gear for overnight and combine that with wet rock. If you want to get a taste of the mountain this year do the East route of Main Peak. That's the normal descent from the traverse and it really helps to climb it and know it before doing the traverse. I just wrote a TR on the ascent of the East Route a few weeks ago. And here's some other links to TR's on these peaks. Trip Report Old Trip Report Old Trip Report

bloodwater the crony repug CEO pays off the crony repug politician, essentially purchasing the right to a no bid contract. Costs are GROSSLY inflated. Goons are hired and restraining laws are removed so there won't be any costly repercussions. enron's MO to the bone, don't break the laws, just remove them then commit the crimes scot free. but they can't stop there because greed knows no limits, they even break what little laws are left. of course all this money spent is just borrowed at taxpayers expense. Like the 9 bil that disappeared shortly after we went in there. or the 9 bil that enron stuck Califa for, and then Arnold was cheated in there and the first thing he did was shut down the AG's case to get the 9 bil back. or like the 3 trillion missing from the pentagon books, that death skull rummy reported about on 9-10. timed so the story would disappear.

Got bit when I went into the Pickets, nest on the ground, not like "domestic" yellow jackets down here. They bit and when swatted they avoided the swat and came back to bite elsewhere. I was also running and they chased along. Sometimes year to year weather differences make a difference in populations. One year at the house there was a soccer ball sized nest on the eaves of the garage, and another large one on the neighbors house. Haven't seen anything close to that size before or since.

""Guess I don't get it."" I've never climbed it, but was under the impression that it rarely comes in condition simultaneous with avy danger being low. From talking to the locals that seemed to be the best time to climb it. You almost have to live there, it's probably like the EDM, you have to be ready to go at a moments notice.

""WASHINGTON -- The House passed a bill Thursday that would make all private contractors working in Iraq and other combat zones subject to prosecution by U.S. courts."" "I suspect Bush will veto it." NO KIDDING?

""Keep in mind that Iraq is a violent place."" Yeah it is, especially after we bombed the crap out of it back into the 3rd world, after we perpetrated Abu Graibe and collected and distributed pictures, to poke the hornets nest, yeah it's violent now. ""For every incident you hear or read about, whatever the nature of the incident, there are perhaps hundreds more that go unnoticed. It is the nature of reporting"" embeded in the green zone is hardly reporting. Or are you talking about the defense department report on the incident that was ghost written by a blackwater employee? """The ROE dictates the level of force permissible. This ranges from alert behavior to the right to repel deadly force. The force continuum is similar to your rights as a civilian."" Do the Iraqis have ANY rights, when blackwater is accountable to ZERO laws? Do Eric Prince's huge contributions, mostly to repugs, dictate the (ZERO) level of accountability to any laws with respect to their actions? ""There are hard and fast rules, but in war, "" It's not a war, it's an occupation, we are not going to "win" it, just maintain at a low level. More crony defense industry profit that way. Rules?, there are zero rules that apply to these people. ""Some people tend to see this whole issue with such a jaded perspective that they are almost totally unable to see past their preconceived notions. Dru, you are one of those people, and therefore you tend to not get listened to much. Your spew is tired, tired, tired. "" ad hominem homina homina homina Let me get this straight, a bunch of mercenaries with ZERO accountability. In other words, yeeeehhh haaaaaaa, no rules, we can do WHATEVER we please. The human (if you can call them human) nature of these individuals means they aren't exactly boy scouts. Let me also get this straight, we are turning our voluntary force over to crony profiteers and paying them 10 to 20 times (tax $'s) as much as regular army and NOW we have to send the FBI (more tax $'s) to monitor their crooked asses? And stop calling them contractors, call them what they are, MERCENARIES. KILLERS FOR HIRE.

America has the worse diet in the developed world. America takes the most pharmaceuticals in the developed world, there is a connection. It all really started to go south in the early 90's when they deregulated drug commercials on the television. That and the conventional doctors who know absolutely nothing about nutrition. Always treating the symptoms, never the root cause which is usually poor diet. allergies are amplified, aggravated by poor diet. white sugar is in many processed food and now high fructose corn syrup is also, which is linked to the huge rise in diabetes. aspartame----neurotoxin, especially when heated like during storage or in hot tea or coffee. fluoride, neurotoxin, sedative ====================== the good vitamin C is the best, from 4,000 to 8,000 mg/day, the MDR is way low. greens are healing, like spirulina or spinach or wheat grass juice

The main thing I look for in a trail shoe is traction on wet rock. None of the regular running shoes have wet rock traction. Only some of the trail shoes do. It's more of a rubber compound than a plastic one. Usually it's black, anything that's colored is usually plastic. As wet as it is around here it's a must on the trails.

""the bullshit-o-meter is pegging"" "The irony, the irony! " but nothing specific...

"Huh?" Fairweather in a nutshell

""Please pardon me in advance if I can't summon the interest necessary to engage in a point-by-point rebuttal"" the bullshit-o-meter is pegging ""and settle for a bit of light and oh-so-easy mockery instead."" you are as weak as your stance

"Can anyone conceive of a society resembling Orwell’s 1984?" ""You mean like the former Soviet Union? China circa 1945-1985? The North Korea of today? Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge? "" none of these have, the TELEVISION as a primary method of control, also the transmutating enemy, now it's the "war on terror", next thing it will be a war on evil. we must defeat the evil.

If you can't argue with facts JayB make stuff up....

""ordinary thought"" YES JayB, you hit it RIGHT on the head!! you are an ordinary American. You are the result of the dumbing down in the schools. Your "ordinary thoughts" are the result of years of mainstream propaganda. so sad... ""so far outside the walls"" YES JayB YES, I'm HELLA far outside the walls of your bubble, thank God!

""The funny thing about the "unseen-powers-dominate-the-masses-yet-I alone-have-seen-through-their-plan archetype" is that it's so cliched and formulaic"" And yet your "rebuttal" is so non-specific, you can't or won't address any of my specific points as to their truth or validity. ""and derivative and predictable and....[ahem]mass-produced.."" Alternative news on the internet is totally and amazingly diverse. The SHIT you eat for news from the TV is absolutely mass produced by only 5 military industrial complex companies or companies with direct ties to the MIC. ""that I actually predicted that the comeback would include a reference to the red/blue pill dichotomy in "The Matrix." ©"" If the analogy is accurate and well known then why not? Alternatives to what you've been led to believe for so long are just too inconvenient and uncomfortable, so you just reject them out of hand without any critical examination. The truth is people don't want to know the truth, if they did they might have to do something about it. ""Your dissent is so fringe, so far beyond the parameters of ordinary thought, so far outside the walls"" Remember the Nazi rule, propaganda only has to fool 90 percent of the masses. I guess in your case you would see the other 10 percent as fringe. You are inside the bubble that is American mainstream perception. Some of my points are actually well accepted anywhere else in the world. For instance in Canada, the thought that 911 was an inside job actually made it onto the TV so that anyone who cares to notice such things will be awakened to that perception. Another case in point, one of the 911 researchers uses ONLY mainstream media news articles. All he does is compare the massive discrepancies in all the mainstream news and knowledge that is out there. So how is it fringe to catalog mainstream news articles? ""that you instinctively frame it in terms of...a plot device lifted from a popular Hollywood movie. Do you ever feel like the human equivalent of the Hasbro Oiuja Board?"" how much of your reply factually addresses ANY of my points directly and how much of it is just an ad-hominem attack?

""you mean the Zionist-run banking complex? I thought they controlled every media outlet, so, no there is no alternative."" They control, or maybe influence is a better word, about 90 percent, and almost 100 percent of the television. The best alternative is the internet, although there is a lot of printed material it's not as accessible to most.

Don't do drugs, unless you count adrenaline, don't even drink, TV has been in the closet for 10 years. do you think there is no alternative to the "news" that the military industrial banking complex supplies you to "see" how things "really" are?

Get back to your television JayB, When Morpheus asked him, JayB picked the blue pill...

KK says ""Since the dawn of time war has been the predominant solution and perfectly acceptable to almost every culture and nation."" War like physical violence is the last resort of someone who has exceeded their mental capacity for dialog or diplomacy. Modern wars are most often created by the wealthy elite to gain power and money. They fabricate a false pretense to get the working class to go along. And even then a majority is not down with it. Just witness the 10 million worldwide that protested against dumbya before the Iraq invasion. They learned a lot from Vietnam, They're doing this one with no draft, so people aren't forced to go, although the Guard and Reserves is a back door draft. And with less total soldiers, making the existing ones go on longer more numerous tours. This way less of the populace is involved so they don't even notice. That and a firmer control of the media. With media ownership consolidation control has tightened, just witness the photo ban on the flag draped coffins. ""Invading Normandy and bombing Nagasaki were solutions to end WWII."" the ending is academic, it's the beginning you need to look at more critically. They are in the business of manufacturing the solution. Why can't they also be in the business of creating the problem that requires their for-profit solution? Hitler had no money to start with, a large part of the funding of his rise to power came from American businesses and banking. The largest American bank to fund Hitler was the Union Banking Corporation in New York City. On Oct. 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City which were being conducted by Prescott Bush. Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over the Union Banking Corporation, in which Bush was a director. Nazi interests in the Silesian-American Corporation, long managed by Prescott Bush and his father-in-law George Herbert Walker, were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act on Nov. 17, 1942. notice these dates are after we went to war with Germany, so while we were at war, the bushies were bankrolling Hitler. ""And we've not gone to war with Germany since, now, have we?"" There's been a shift in method, starting with the Vietnam war. Large scale wars in the 1st world are too destructive of infrastructure and populations. They've moved to the low scale wars in the 3rd world. More profit because they last longer and not as destructive to their own 1st world.

Seahawk c.t. says ""your such an ignoramus...Your as bad as you claim the president is."" he's the stupidest president we've ever had....are you as dumb as he is? "I am mindful of the difference between the executive branch and the legislative branch.... and that difference is they pass the laws and I execute them." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 20, 2000 "The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to interpret law." --George W. Bush, Austin, Texas, Nov. 22, 2000 "They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program." --George W. Bush, Nov. 2, 2000 "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2000 "I heard somebody say, 'Where's (Nelson) Mandela?' Well, Mandela's dead. Because Saddam killed all the Mandelas." --George W. Bush, on the former South African president, who is still very much alive, Washington, D.C., Sept. 20, 2007 ""Unlike the libby freaks if they went to a draft I would go, "" So you'll advocate war but only participate if you are forced to go. In other words you won't voluntarily put your money where your mouth is. ""What they fail to realize that this is a war, whether they want to admit it or not."" It's not a war it's an occupation. The war was the first 2 weeks. We outspent and out-powered Iraq something like 400 to 1, of course we "won" that. The occupation had no plan for success because they knew it was probably un-winnable, the probably didn't even want to win, just an indefinite occupation, more profit that way. The military war-gamed the occupation, which is a guerrilla war, before the invasion. The commander of the "guerrillas" was winning easily until they made him stand down. Sun Tzu in "The Art of War" the oldest military treatise in existence stated thousands of years ago, you can not win a guerrilla war unless you have the local inhabitants on your side. With Abu Graib they intentionally drove the inhabitants to fight us. You can't tell me cameras and video was allowed in very large numbers into a secure prison and all this incriminating crap was allowed to be documented and then released in the mainstream press which the military industrial banking complex owns lock stock and barrel. Remember they weren't fighting us before Abu Graib. You can also look at how much we out-power and out-spend the insurgency, and we've been fighting this war longer than WW2, which was against a closely matched opponent, how come we haven't won yet? And the threat of Islam is just a modern day Emmanuel Goldstein, it's a false fabrication, they are not a real threat. If they are then how come Saddam was a secular leader who was against theocracy? Now that he's deposed Iraq is turning into a theocratic state just like Iran. If we are fighting Islam how come our "war" has supported the rise of Islamic theocracy? If Islam is such a real threat, how come our southern border is just as wide open as before 911? How come our oil refineries and power plants (including nuclear) are just as unguarded as before 911? Because there is no real threat. ""Women get your head bans ready."" you're sounding dumbya-esque here Seahawk. ""Pacifism was the way before WW2, everyone wanted to crawl in there holes and not get involved."" and the only way they got the people to go along was with Pearl Harbor, which they drove the Japanese into, and then knowingly allowed to happen. They had already broken Japanese code and they already had radar. Pearl Harbor was a LIHOP, 911 is worse, a false flag inside job, MIHOP. "" Just don't cry when they nuke a city and send us into another depression."" A Q Khan is the father of the Pakistan nuclear bomb. The CIA has long been in bed with the Pakistan equivalent ISI. The CIA looked the other way and some say even provided assistance to Khan during development. Khan went on to distribute the technology to Libya, North Korea and Iran. After the cold war and Russia's break up Russia has had trouble keeping track of all it's nuclear materials. The UN and others have been involved trying to keep track of it. Bush has been against funding of this effort to track Russian nukes. Israel is the only country not be be part of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. They don't even admit to the hundreds of nuclear weapons they are known to have. The USA is a member but have violated several of it's tenants. Iran is also a member and the IAEA is on the ground there and says they are complying with the rules that say nuclear power plants may be developed. So while the bushies go on and on about the fake nuclear threats like Saddam's yellowcake and Iran's bomb, they ignore the real threats like in Russia, Pakistan and Israel. And if you want to talk Nuclear weapons of mass destruction just look at Depleted Uranium. For years the military industrial complex has been looking for a way to dispose of nuclear waste like DU. Now they are using it as armor piercing shells. It's cheap, the refiners give it away to the arms manufactures. It started in Gulf War 1. Approx 150 US soldiers died in that operation. Since then 11,000 GW1 vets have died at an early age due to "gulf war syndrome" which many experts believe is tied to DU, or "agent orange" on steroids. A personal friend of mine was on a 4 man tank crew there, the other 3 are already dead. The use of DU has increased more than 10 times in GW 2 and the soldiers are in theatre 10 times as long. The real casualties numbers of this war are being hidden and won't be known for years to come. It makes it easier to prolong it that way when you hide the real numbers from the masses. ""According to Bin Laden's 1998 fatwa (religious decree)"" Emmanuel Goldstein again. A fabricated boogie man Bin Laden was once a CIA asset, like the mafia, once in you can never leave. The Bin Laden family has been in business with the bushies for going on 3 decades. On 911 bush sr was in a meeting with one of the brothers, and shortly after 911 all the Bin Ladens were gathered up and flown out of the country without questioning. Bin Laden went to a US hospital in Dubai for his kidney problem just before 911 and it's said he was briefed by the local CIA agent. This was after the Cole bombing of which he is suspect. Most believe he died at Tora Bora, the last 3 of his videos have been poor fakes, it's not him in these videos. Realize that propaganda need only be accurate enough to fool 90 percent of the masses, this rule has been recognized since it was documented by the Nazis. Also take a look at Bin Ladens web page on the FBI's most wanted list. There is no mention of 911, why? Because the FBI says there is no material evidence linking Bin Laden to 911. ================ modern wars are fought for oil, power and money. There is only 2 benefits I can see. One is that 1st world population is already too large for the Earth to sustain it, and the recent wars like Vietnam and Iraq have kept these countries from moving into the 1st world. Iraq was already there and were driven back to the 3rd. This may seem harsh but mother nature is the same. The better alternative would be education leading to birth control, but the wealthy elite can't have education because an educated populace tends to overthrow a monied elite over time. The other is a more ephemeral one. Like the 300 that defended Sparta. They asked the oracle what they had to do to defend against the invaders, the answer was sacrifice your best men. While for fake reasons the end result is the same, our best get sacrificed. And hopefully we go on with our peaceful lives. Just look at the baby boom after WW2, after huge suffering the soldiers came back to a rewarding life. The yen yang of suffering and reward.

Giving something lip service like Clinton did on Iraq is pretty far from acting on it. Like the lying us into an illegal invasion. I don't really like Clinton, he's a closet conservative, or more like, a corporatist. Also we were bombing Iraq during his term. It's all due to pressure from AIPAC, Israel, neocons et al, the Clinton's are beholden to them, just like about everyone at the national level nowadays. love the fetus, hate the child abortion went down during the Clinton years because like guns abortion is not caused by abortion doctors and policies, it's caused by the need for it which is usually poverty. Poverty went down under Clinton and so did abortion. under dumbya poverty is up and abortion has stopped going down and likely to climb again. Abortion is just a wedge issue, it rallies the conservative base. The corporate repugs are never going to do anything about abortion because a bunch of one issue voters would stop voting for them. They hold their noses to all the other crap the repugs pull and vote because of the abortion stance. for the last 6 years or so the repugs have held all three branches of power, they've done absolutely nothing consequential to overturn roe-v-wade. Lack of abortion raises the crime rates also, because abortions usually are for unwanted children. Unwanted children more often grow up to be criminals. There's too many children already on the planet, why do you want to bring unwanted ones into it? The repugs have always been against children, just look at the current health care coverage for children initiative that dumbya is threatening to veto. And no-child-left-behind is underfunded by the millions.

You have to know which park your peak is in. Two examples would be Jasper National Park - Columbia Icefields, which has Mt Andromeda, Slipstream, Weeping Wall, Mt Alberta, North Twin. It's 50 miles from the nearest weather report city. And Glacier Nat Park, Mt Sir Donald (50 Classics), also about 50 mi from nearest large city. Gear shops are Gravity Gear in Jasper, and mountainmagic.com in Banff, don't know the Lake Louise shop but there is one at the shopping center there.

That's so nice to hear... well not that he died, but how he died... of old age and not on a climb, after all the sad climbing deaths this year. now if more of us can just emulate him